Links between autobiographical memory richness and temporal discounting in older adults

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>When making choices between smaller, sooner rewards and larger, later ones, people tend to discount or devalue future outcomes. This propensity can be maladaptive, especially as individuals age and their decisions about health, investments, and relationships become increasingly consequential. Individual differences in temporal discounting in older adults have been associated with episodic memory abilities, as well as with cortical thickness in the entorhinal cortex. The mechanism by which better memory might lead to more future-oriented choice remains unclear, however. Here we used a fine-grained measure of autobiographical memory richness (Autobiographical Interview scoring protocol) to examine which categories of episodic details are associated with temporal discounting in cognitively normal older adults. We also examined whether recalling autobiographical memories prior to choice can alter temporal discounting in this group. Time, place, and perceptual details, but not event or emotion/thought details, were associated with temporal discounting. Furthermore, time, place, and perceptual details and temporal discount rates were associated with entorhinal cortical thickness. Retrieving autobiographical memories prior to choice did not affect temporal discounting overall, but the extent to which the memories were rich in event and time details predicted whether they would reduce discounting after they were recalled. Thus, more future-oriented decision-makers may have more contextual (i.e., time, place, and perceptual) details in their recollections overall, and retrieving central event details at the time of choice may shift decisions toward being more patient. These findings will help with the development of interventions to nudge intertemporal choices, especially in older adults with memory decline.</jats:p>

Intertemporal choice reflects value comparison rather than self-control: insights from confidence judgements

“…A higher k value indicates that, for a given participant, rewards lose their SV more quickly with increasing delays to their receipt. In previous work, this hyperbolic discounting function well characterizes delay discounting choice data [38,45], as it did here (see electronic supplementary material, analysis 1). To derive the subjective value difference between the options in a given choice (SVD), separately for MCQ SVs (MCQ SV) and Bidding task SVs (Bidding SV), we subtracted question-specific SV SS (which we assume to be identical to the objective SS amount) from SV LL , to compute a signed difference in SV between each option pair.…”

Intertemporal choice reflects value comparison rather than self-control: insights from confidence judgments

“…A higher k value indicates that, for a given participant, rewards lose their subjective value more quickly with increasing delays to their receipt. In previous work, this hyperbolic discounting function well characterizes temporal discounting choice data (38,42), as it did here (see supplementary analysis 1). To derive the subjective value difference between the options in a given choice (SVD), separately for MCQ subjective values (MCQ SV) and Bidding task subjective values (Bidding SV), we subtracted question specific SVSS (which we assume to be identical to the objective SS amount) from SVLL, to compute a signed difference in subjective value between each option pair.…”

“…In line with the value-based decision-making account, we hypothesized that participants would hold lower confidence in intertemporal decisions when options were more similar in subjective value, as defined by independent Bidding task self-reports. We also hypothesized that decisions closer to this indifference point would take longer because they require additional deliberation (8,(47)(48)(49), and that this effect would manifest as a negative relationship between response time and confidence (8,22,42). In a mixed effects linear regression combining trials from the two MCQ presentations, the absolute difference in Bidding subjective value (Bidding-|SVD|) between the available choice options positively predicted MCQ decision confidence, in line with our pre-registered hypothesis, b= 0.13, t=…”

Decision neuroscience and neuroeconomics: Recent progress and ongoing challenges

“…In addition, older adults are generally less risk‐seeking than younger adults, though there is significant variation across domains and individuals (Josef et al, 2016). Building on these results, a recent study demonstrated that reduced temporal discounting in older adults is associated with richer perception‐based details of autobiographical memory, an effect that may be linked to entorhinal cortical thickness (Lempert et al, 2020).…”

“…In particular, the field has made progress toward linking typical neurological development across the lifespan (Samanez‐Larkin & Knutson, 2015) with changes in decision making as well as applications to psychopathology (Baskin‐Sommers & Foti, 2015). Changes across the lifespan have focused on topics from the seemingly hasty decisions of adolescence to how decisions may reflect symptoms of mild cognitive impairment associated with old age (Lempert et al, 2020). In addition to strides made toward characterizing how responses to decision variables change across the lifespan, the field of computational psychiatry (Huys et al, 2016) has helped to incorporate decision neuroscience into contemporary models of psychiatric or mental disorders.…”